A Panda Patchwork
by Ilien
Summary: A place to put all my little bits and pieces.
1. A Word of Advice

A Word of Advice 

The Golden Harvest Noodle Shop was the best restaurant in the Valley of Peace, and everyone in the Valley came there at one time or another, including the Kung Fu masters from the Jade Palace. At not quite four years old, Po wasn't entirely sure what a Kung Fu master was; all he knew is that he wanted to be nothing else in his life.

And so when the three masters were seated at a table eating, he wandered up to find out what they were talking about. After a moment he realized there were not three, but four - the new one, Mantis, was on the table. Po wasn't allowed to sit on tables, and wondered if the rules were different for Kung Fu masters. Or mantises.

"So once we leave the Valley, it should only take about four days to get there," Master Fox was saying. Po thought she was a very pretty lady, with her bushy, white-tipped tail. Master Gaur was rather more intimidating; he was huge, compared to everyone, not just a three-year-old panda.

"Four days for us," Gaur said, grinning, "but who's going to carry Mantis?"

"Just keep it up, Gaur," answered Mantis, looking annoyed at the chuckles of the others.

Po asked, "Where you going?" They turned to look at him, surprised. "I'll go too!"

Fox broke out in a beaming smile. "Aren't you precious? Where are your parents, sweetie?"

Gaur laughed aloud. "So we have a fifth warrior now? Mantis, I think we've found someone your size for you to spar with!"

Mantis whirled a chopstick like a staff. "Let's go back up to the arena, Gaur, and I'll show you who's my size." He didn't sound amused. Gaur continued to laugh.

Po said, "I can do kung fu. Watch!" He began to shuffle around as fast as he could. Gaur seemed to find that amusing, too.

"Look at that. The kid has some kind of footwork going there. Anyone seen anything like this?"

Po had the feeling he was being laughed at, and he tried harder, circling around behind Gaur's seat and backing around the corner of the table. As he turned, his foot caught the table leg, and he tipped over backward, arms flailing.

A hand caught his shoulder and righted him. "Not bad, but you will need practice."

Po turned to look at the fourth master. He felt foolish, and was starting to sniffle. "But I almost fell over. I fall a lot."

"I'm sure we all did. I'll tell you a secret."

"Here we go," said Mantis, rolling his eyes.

Fox leaned forward, ears perked, huge eyes widening even further. "Oh, this I have to hear."

"Gather round, friends," Gaur laughed. "The great master of kung fu is about to bestow on us the wisdom of the universe. I feel so blessed."

Tai Lung turned a sardonic look on his companions, then turned back to the panda. He said simply, "Keep breathing."

Po looked puzzled. "What?"

"Keep breathing," the snow leopard repeated. "As long as you're still breathing, you're still fighting." The intense golden eyes looked deeply into Po's. "Never give up."

Po stared back. He wasn't entirely certain he understood, but he wasn't entirely certain he didn't understand, either.

Then his father's voice cut through his concentration. "Po! Don't bother the customers!" Ping rushed up to the table. "I am so sorry my son bothered you…"

"Not at all," said Fox. "Is he yours? He's precious!"

"Oh. Yes. Thank you," Ping said, rather vaguely, flustered by her compliments. He focused on his son. "Po, come help me in the kitchen. Let's see if we can find you some lunch." He herded the little panda away from the table.

Behind him, Po heard Gaur say, "Keep breathing? That's all you've got?"

"Do you have something better?" came Tai Lung's smooth voice.

If there was a reply, Po didn't hear it.

* * *

I feel I should mention, the review with my name on it came from my son. Glad you enjoyed it, Ryan! ;-D


	2. Remembrance

Remembrance

…_keep breathing. Never give up..._

_He still remembered the words, although they'd been said to him long ago, days and days ago, when the masters from the Jade Palace had been eating noodles in his baba's shop. But now the masters were gone, and a monster was raging outside, and he was scared behind the bags of rice in the storage room. He thought he shouldn't be scared, but he couldn't help it. He peeked out from behind the bags, wishing he was big enough and brave enough and strong enough to fight whatever was scaring him and baba. His baba turned from the door and saw him, and smiled, but his eyes were scared and his voice was shaking. "Po, you need to stay behind the bags. Just for a little while," and he tried to smile wider, but it only made him look more scared. "But I hungry," Po said, because it was what he always said, and he hoped somehow it would make things like they always were. His baba looked at the door, then looked at him, and then came away from the door and reached into a box. He gave Po a handful of water chestnuts, and pushed him gently back behind the bags. "There you go," he said. "Now stay back here, okay?" "Okay," he said, munching and feeling a little better, as his baba went back beside the door, and he tried to be brave like the kung fu masters, and remembered…_

…_keep breathing…_

Po woke up to the sound of his dad's voice calling him, and blinked at the sunlight. He groaned, and flopped back over, burying his head in his pillow. The last of his dream faded from his mind, leaving only a faint trace, a dim memory of the smell of smoke and his dad's nervous smile, and a quiet voice saying –

"Po!" Ping's voice sounded louder from the top of the stairs. "Get up, son! You'll be late for school!"

"Dad!" he protested, pulling his pillow and blanket over his head. "Lemme sleep! I'll help you in the kitchen later."

Ping crossed the room and pulled the bedding off Po's head, then rolled him off the bed onto the floor. The ten-year-old panda was already much bigger than he was, but his son's round shape made rolling him all too easy. "You know I love to have you help in the kitchen," he said, fussing around the room, gathering up paper and brushes, inkstone and ink sticks into their box and putting the whole kit into a bag with Po's rather large lunch. "But you need your education too. What would the town think of me if I didn't get my son a good education? And how would you know how to write up a menu?"

Po sat up, encouraged by the bulges in the lunch sack. "Okay, dad. I'm going." He grabbed up a pair of shuriken from beneath his bed, and stuck them in the sack he took from his father. Ping retrieved the bag and removed the weapons before returning the sack to Po.

"Dad!"

"Those will be here when you get home. Now hurry!"

So Po headed out of the noodle shop and through the streets to the small schoolhouse at the edge of town. He took his place among the other children, mostly rabbits and pigs, and daydreamed about his lunch and kung fu through most of the day's geography lesson. He focused a bit more when the lesson turned to calligraphy; he'd heard from someone that Master Crane up at the Jade Palace practiced calligraphy. Then his attention was caught by the history lesson, when the teacher told the story of the lynx bandit, Kou, and his gang; how they had raided the outlying villages of the Valley of Peace until they were stopped by Master Shifu. Po eagerly absorbed every word. Even the teacher's dramatic retelling wasn't enough for him; he could have listened to a detailed description of every moment of the encounter, every word said, every blow struck, and still not had enough.

He ate his lunch, enthusiastically rehashing the story with his friends Heng and Xin. The pigs were brothers, Heng a year older than Po, Xin a year younger, and while they might not have been quite as obsessed with kung fu as the panda, they were certainly squarely in the category of fans. After lunch, Po daydreamed his way through arithmetic and philosophy, then picked up the discussion with his friends again as they walked home.

They reached the brothers' house, and were greeted, as usual, by their grandfather, Yong, seated in his chair on the porch. He had been joined by his two old brothers Fu and Shun; the latter seemed to be asleep, his chair tilted back on two legs to rest against the wall.

Xin was chattering to his elderly relatives before he reached the porch. "Yeye! Uncle Fu! Guess what we learned about in school today?" He proceeded to relate the whole story again, complete with illustrative moves and sound effects, while Po and Heng added commentary and a few details Xin forgot.

The elders listened to them seriously, and if the smiles they gave each other were a bit indulgent of the enthusiasm of youth, the boys didn't catch it. Finally, Uncle Fu nodded. "Very exciting. Very exciting. You know, we all," he gestured at his brothers, "We remember when that happened." Yong nodded. Shun teetered a bit on his chair and snored softly.

Three pairs of eyes went wide. "You do?" gasped Heng. He hadn't really considered the mathematics of the story; if this had happened shortly before he was born, then of course his grandfather and great uncles would have been adults at the time. "Can you tell us about it?"

Yong snorted. "Not much to tell. Your teacher got it mostly right." He snorted again. "Mostly."

"_Just_ right," Fu insisted, with a glare at his brother. "Their teacher got it just right. We're lucky to have the masters at the Jade Palace here to protect us."

Yong gave Fu a disgusted look. "Don't remember hearing that from you when –"

Fu's glare intensified and he hushed his brother with an inarticulate exclamation. "Eeaayugh." At least that was what it sounded like to Po. He glanced at his friends' elders in puzzlement.

"Don't think I don't remember what happened," Fu went on, his tone becoming querulous. "I remember that lynx. Big lynx he was, too, with a whole lot of followers, lynxes and wolves and what have you. And it was Master Shifu took out the whole lot of 'em. By himself."

"Wasn't," Yong said shortly. "And you don't remember that lynx; you don't remember your breakfast this morning, you old fool."

Fu was indignant. "I do so remember! It was…. Was…," Evidently, breakfast escaped him. "Well, then, who was it took out that lynx, huh? Wasn't that rooster used to be in the Furious Five."

"Nope," agreed Yong. "Wasn't the rooster."

"Wasn't that owl. She may have thought she was the gods' gift to China, but she wasn't. Oh, no…" he shook his head emphatically. "Wasn't the elephant either. I remember that elephant, don't tell me I don't, Yong! That elephant broke every tile on my roof with his sneaking around! Didn't he, Shun?"

Shun snored. The boys listened, fascinated.

"Wasn't the elephant," Yong agreed.

"So if it wasn't Master Shifu, who was it, then?" Fu demanded, a note of triumph in his voice. Yong just smiled knowingly at him. Fu considered. Had he forgotten any of the Jade Palace warriors? Oh, yes, wait. "It wasn't that…" he groped for the name. "That Master Shihao, was it? You remember him. The leopard."

Yong nodded. "Oh, it was a leopard, all right. Not Shihao. It was Tai Lung."

Fu's eyes went wide in alarm. He glanced nervously at the three boys, gesturing wildly at his brother and making loud shushing noises. Shun's eyes snapped open and his chair legs hit the porch as he sat up. "What? What's all the fuss? What are you two arguing about?"

Fu continued to hiss at his brother. "Don't be telling the kids about that, Yong!" he said in what was supposed to be a whisper but carried perfectly to three pairs of young ears.

Po didn't want to be disrespectful of the elders, but was dying to ask. Fortunately, Heng did it for him. "Uncle Fu? Who was Tai Lung?"

Fu left off trying to shush his now silently smirking brother and looked helplessly at his great nephew. "No one you need to worry about," he said hastily.

Yong snorted a third time. "He was only about the best –," he started, which set off another round of hysterical shushing from Fu. Shun blinked at them, trying to figure out what was going on. Then Heng and Xin's grandmother Wen came out of the house, calling the boys in and berating the three old men on the porch for telling stories that would give the children nightmares.

Po walked home slowly, lost in thought.

When Po got home, he told his father about his day in school, as he always did. But then they had to make noodles and chop vegetables, and get the big soup pot going. And he had to draw a new target for his shuriken, this one a grimacing lynx face. The dinner rush came and went without any time for further questions, and then they had to clean up the kitchen, wash the dishes, and get everything ready for the next day. It was bedtime before Po got a chance – and the nerve – to ask his father about the conversation between Mr. Yong and Mr. Fu. Mr. Fu and Mrs. Wen had been so upset about the matter…

Ping wasn't happy about it, either. "Well…," he started, not sure how to proceed. He never wanted to lie to Po. He didn't like keeping things from him, but the boy was too young to be told everything. He didn't need to know how cruel the world could be, how fragile the peace of the Valley of Peace actually was. Not yet. Ping remembered that horrible night only too well, hiding with Po in the storeroom, hoping the rampaging snow leopard would go down another street or at least past his house; and knowing with a pang of guilt that their being bypassed would only mean tragedy for someone else.

And not three weeks before he had been in the noodle shop, talking and smiling with the other kung fu masters, looking, acting like the hero they all thought he was. Sitting in Ping's courtyard. Eating his noodles. Talking to his son. Ping shuddered.

He looked at Po's hopeful expression. "Well…," he said again. "Tai Lung… was a student at the Jade Palace. But he's not there now," he finished quickly, hoping that would settle the matter.

It didn't. Of course it didn't. Po stared at him expectantly, green eyes wide. Ping stared back, brows furrowed in worry. Hoping Po would drop it.

"What happened to him?"

"He…," Ping started. How to say this so he wouldn't frighten the boy? "He turned out to be bad, son. He used what Master Shifu taught him for evil. And so now he's in prison, far away. And… that's all," he finished.

"Oh." Po thought a moment. "Was he a good fighter, though? He must have been, to fight those bandits. And I think Mr. Yong started to say he was the best…"

Ping nodded. "He was very good at fighting, Po. Probably one of the best." He blew out the candle in the lantern by Po's bed. "But he didn't fight for the right things. And that's what counts. Not what you can do. Whether you do it right. Good night, son." He leaned over and hugged his son tightly. "I love you, Po."

"Night, dad. I love you too."

Ping was almost out of the room when Po spoke again.

"Dad?"

"Yes, son?"

"Did I ever meet Tai Lung?"

Ping heard the odd tone in Po's voice, as though the boy were trying to remember something. But he couldn't, could he? He'd been so young. Ping hesitated. He didn't want to lie to Po. He didn't.

"No," he said finally, decisively. "You never met him." He half turned back into the room. "Good night, Po." Then he crossed the landing to his own room as Po returned his "Good night."

But Po lay awake for a long time, trying to remember. He was sure his dad was right. What the teacher and the old pigs had talked about, that had happened a long time ago, right? And he had never heard of this Tai Lung before today, so he couldn't have been here long, and it must have been before Po was born. So how could he have met him? And anyway, his dad had said he hadn't, that this leopard had been a bad man and was locked up somewhere, and that wasn't the kind of person Po had ever met.

And yet as he dozed off, he could almost remember _something_, just an impression, like a memory of a dream, or something from an old story; intense golden eyes, and a voice saying _keep breathing_…


	3. Storm

Storm

Violet and indigo and gray against the expanse of blue, the fliers were like a small storm cloud inexplicably lost against the vast summer sky.

"This is true freedom," the owl said. "The world spread out below you, the sun on your back, the wind in your feathers. "

Her small companion, caught tight in her claws, let out a high, childish laugh. "I don't have any feathers!"

"You should," she answered. "Are you ready?"

"Yes!"

She flung him high, outward, watched as a body meant to remain earthbound soared for a moment before he began to fall. He never screamed when they played this game, except from excitement; never flailed with hands and feet grasping for support that was not there. He simply never believed that he could not fly.

Or perhaps, he simply never believed that she would not catch him. She did so now, circling back to the ground, wrapping her wings around his giddy, purring hug, then watching him scamper off.

From the corner of her eye, Fenghuang watched Shifu deliberately quiet his breathing, relax his muscles.

"It's too dangerous," he said, yet again. "I can't allow it."

"Of course you can," she answered, an edge in her voice. "Don't be such an old fusspot, Shifu. He loves it. You can't take that from him. He's fearless."

Shifu couldn't resist the compliment to his son. "He is. One day he'll be greater than both of us, Feng."

She gave him a sardonic look. "Well… I don't know about greater than me…"

Shifu only smiled.

* * *

The first time Tai Lung brought her down in a sparring match she was so amazed she crashed to the pavement of the courtyard with the boy's weight on top of her. He scrambled back a moment later, as stunned as she, and stammering apologies. A kick and a blow of her wing sent him rolling away, to leap to his feet so angry that he didn't notice the line of red staining his fur where her talon had caught him.

"What the hell!" he sputtered, his rage and words at odds with his youthful treble. "I wanted to make sure you were okay!"

"Don't you _ever_ do that again!" she hissed. "Don't you ever back off from a fight like that!"

"It was just practice!"

"It's never just practice! If you let that kind of behavior become a habit in practice, you'll back off in real combat as soon as your opponent goes down! And what will happen then?"

He looked down. "I'd be dead."

She picked herself up. "Do not train yourself to back off. Do not train yourself to give in! Train yourself to finish any fight you find yourself in."

His eyes darted to Shifu, standing silently to the side, watching, and he saw the red panda's slight nod. He turned back to the owl and bowed. "Yes, Master Fenghuang."

* * *

The next time he brought her down, three months later, and the first time he was sure it was his own skill and not simply luck, was with a leap timed to her descent, giving her no chance to veer away before he spun up into her, catching her beneath the wing with a kick and dragging her down to the ground in a snarling heap. He didn't let up until Shifu called an end to the match, and left her with a scratch to match the one she'd given him.

"Don't worry about what he wants."

"But I want it, too," he protested.

She fixed him with her intense stare. "Do you?"

"Yes," he insisted. And at her continued, demanding gaze, "He's my father. I love him! I want him to be proud of me!"

She nodded, unblinking. "Of course. But that's no reason to pursue his goals instead of your own. Don't let anyone hold you back."

He looked at her quizzically. "Not even the people you love?"

"Especially not the people you love! They're the ones who will keep you chained down the most, out of love, out of the desire to protect you, to keep you to themselves, to never let you change from what they think you should be."

"But… if they love you… And you love Master Oogway! And Master Shifu and the others, they're your friends…"

"It's not wrong to love. But don't ever let that get in your way, keep you from your dreams. Do whatever is needed to gain your desires." She held his eyes, seeing his troubled look become understanding, and part of his childhood fall away.

* * *

She wondered if he would fly with her after that, but he did. If he was no longer as fearless, or perhaps as trusting, he would never show it; and perhaps the uncertainty added a thrill of danger that was more intoxicating. She soared high above the earth until the Valley of Peace was an indistinct haze of green and blue below them, and when she let him go she watched him spread his arms out like wings.

* * *

He didn't see the confrontation between her and Oogway, but afterwards he found the cage that had been built to hold her. He looked it over carefully, and finally stepped inside. He was nearly as tall as she by now, and there was little room above his head. He reached out; his arms found the sides before he had raised them halfway. She could never spread her wings in this, he thought, his breath a hard painful lump in his chest. He understood, spontaneously and imperfectly, what this would have meant to her. Suddenly the confines of the cage were too much; he leapt out and gave the door a kick, slamming it with a crash, and watched the cage teeter before righting itself.

"I must admit," said Oogway from behind him, where no one had been a moment before, "I am glad I did not have to use it."

"Would you have?" he asked, his voice shaky, blinking rapidly.

"Oh, yes," said the tortoise, with a sigh.

"But she's your student! Your friend!" he insisted.

Oogway smiled sadly, and laid a hand on the young snow leopard's shoulder. "She is. But that does not mean I would not have done what was necessary. What is our purpose here, in the Jade Palace?"

He knew this answer by heart, had known it since he'd been able to understand the words. "We protect those who can't defend themselves, and keep the peace, and help those who need it…"

Oogway nodded. "And when the peace and safety of those under our protection are threatened –"

"We have to defend them… But even from our friends?"

Oogway sighed again. "Even from our friends," he answered wearily. "Perhaps, especially from our friends."

* * *

Shifu would say nothing about Fenghuang except that she had disgraced Master Oogway's teachings and the Jade Palace, and would say no more. He would not hear her spoken of. Tai Lung saw his stiff posture and closed expression, and wondered if it were really so easy to turn away from a friend.

"But why did she do it?" he insisted.

"Because she wanted power," Shifu said shortly. "She thought she should be master of the Jade Palace."

"But why?"

"She thought she knew better than Master Oogway." And he would say no more, not then, and not ever.

* * *

He wouldn't give up his desire for flight, or for danger – all the greater now, with no one to catch him. He leaped between the roofs of buildings, swung out on ropes over deep chasms, scrambled up cliffs like a lizard with only his claws between himself and the drop beneath. The first time he leapt from the roof of the Hall of Heroes all the way to the village below, he misjudged his landing and trudged back up the hill, bruised and scraped and with a broken arm. Soon after that healed, it became his favored way to descend the mountain, scorning the long stairway used by everyone else. At last the pig whose roof he always landed on, courteously desperate, asked Oogway and Shifu to put an end to his antics and pay for his broken tiles.

* * *

Fenghuang had said he was fearless, that he should pursue his dreams without letting anyone hold him back. Shifu had said he would be the best warrior the Jade Palace had ever produced. It never occurred to him to disbelieve them. If he would someday be the perfect warrior, now he would be the perfect student, learning everything there was to know.

He sat by the moon pool, a scroll spread out across his lap, reading intently by the light of the many candles. A sudden gust of air set the flames flickering, rustled the paper in his hands. He looked up. The surface of the pool was a rippling mosaic of candlelight and shadow. Through the door, he saw the sky beginning to lighten, the first hints of dawn changing the color of the clouds from below the horizon. Had he been here all night?

He set the scroll aside, rose, stretched. The pool was almost still now. He could see the reflection of the dragon frieze beginning to form on its surface. He looked up. The red and jade cylinder hung in the dragon's jaws, where it always had.

She had told him to pursue what he wanted, not what his father wanted for him, but there was only one thing here worth having. Shifu had wanted it, but had accepted Oogway's decision and put it aside – for himself at least. Had Fenghuang wanted it? What else? To be Master of the Palace was to be master of the Scroll. They had tried for it, and failed. He would not.

He stretched again, and walked to the door of the hall. No time to sleep; he'd need to head to the training hall for the day's practice. He looked out at the morning sky again, and longed to feel the wind in his face, the rush of air through his fur, to feel like he could fly.

* * *

He woke from a nightmare, of flight and falling. Gasping, he untangled the blanket that had somehow wrapped around him, and looked around the darkened room, trying to get his bearings. It was still, not a breath of air coming through the open window. He rose and went to look outside, wondering what had brought him out of his dream. In the sky, clouds massed dark against the stars.

He had dreamed of Fenghuang, flying in a storm through the northern mountains where they heard she had taken refuge. The lightning struck and she fell, into the cage that now gathered dust in a Palace storeroom. He could feel the metal closing in around her, pinioning her wings, blocking the wind, reducing the wide world beneath her to a mere slit through which to see only what was no longer hers.

He clenched his teeth so tightly it hurt, and swallowed hard, to keep back the tears pricking his eyes. Then the storm broke with a rush of wind in his face, driving icy rain against his cheeks. Lightning flashed, so bright that his night-accustomed eyes were overwhelmed, leaving him for a moment in the cold and the dark; and then the thunder, crashing like a door slamming irrevocably shut.

He turned away from the window, and left the room, padding on silent feet to Shifu's bed, curling up against his father's back, seeking shelter from the storm.


	4. Damage Control

Damage Control 

Master Shifu stared at the devastation before him. It was disheartening, and yet, he felt, inevitable. He should have known.

It was, after all, a recurring affliction in the history of the Jade Palace. Just, usually, not so… so…

The beginning, at least in his experience, had come in his own youth. Taotie's experiments usually caused some damage to the masonry, but the real problem had come when he and Junjie, in a youth the latter would barely admit to now, had taken to sledding down the steps to the Palace on shields. The divots and slick spots they'd caused resulted in any number of trips and falls, to this day.

And that was only the beginning.

Pham, bless him, had wanted so badly to be a ninja, and had been so singularly unsuited to the role. The carpenters and roof tile makers of the Valley had loved that elephant.

His companion in the previous Furious Five, the leopard Shihao, had never broken the habit of sharpening his claws. On anything that came to hand. Intricate carving and laquerwork be damned.

Of course, nothing had been quite as spectacular as the time Tai Lung set the training hall on fire. If the boy had only asked, Shifu could have told him that while putting several of the Wooden Warriors on top of the Field of Fire might make for a challenging and dramatic training session, there were certain obvious drawbacks to the plan…

Tigress, of course, had been much more reserved, much more focused on controlling her strength and improving her dexterity – while training. Outside of training, however, was another matter. Especially during her brief but misguided attempt to learn to cook, since, as she said, all young women knew how to cook… Before she got that out of her system, he'd had to replace all the kitchen crockery. Twice.

Mantis was not particularly destructive in his own right. However, he could have a temper, and the flying bodies of larger, less observant folk who tripped over or stepped on the insect tended to land in unfortunate places…

Monkey's problem had stemmed purely from curiosity. His first year at the Jade Palace had been a hard one on drawers, shutters, and cabinet doors.

Fortunately, Crane and Viper had proved to be calm, conscientious students who left no damage in their wake. They were so much easier on his nerves.

But now there was Po. Oh, there was Po! It was his own fault, he knew; he should have given strict orders that the panda was not to be allowed into the Hall of Heroes so soon after his first visit. But somehow he'd overlooked that simple precaution.

And so he surveyed the aftermath of the rolling catastrophe that was Oogway's choice for the Dragon Warrior.

There was a small puddle of blood on the floor near the Sword of Heroes, reputedly so sharp you could cut yourself simply by looking at it, which was apparently the least the panda had done. All of Master Dog's shuriken were imbedded in various pillars, from which two of the pigs employed by the Palace were attempting to remove them. The painting of Pham seemed to depict him sporting a second trunk, which on closer examination turned out to be a stray noodle. The Invisible Trident of Destiny was missing from its stand (according to the pigs) and would likely not be found until someone tripped over it. And Zheng was still trying to glue the Urn of Whispering Warriors back together.

Shifu's shoulders slumped, his ears flattened close to his head, and one eyelid twitched. He heaved a deep, heartfelt sigh.

_This is why we can never have nice things._


End file.
